


Widow's Bite

by jenna_thorn



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Multi, Pre-Canon, Strike Team Delta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-27
Updated: 2012-11-27
Packaged: 2017-11-19 16:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/575439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenna_thorn/pseuds/jenna_thorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barton’s hand lingered as he shut down the computer. “Sir, at what point does keeping track of a woman you met once at a party become stalking?”</p>
<p>“Employing a long lens camera.”</p>
<p>“Well, shit. I’ve crossed <i>that</i> line.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Pre-movie. Phil&Clint&Natasha

“Take the shot.” 

He heard the slightest brush of air, soft enough that Phil was probably imagining it and Barton keyed his mike. “Confirmed, sir. “

“Pack up but hold position; there’s a disturbance elsewhere, and it’s interfering with the primary routes. Wait fifteen and go to secondary exit strategy.” He could hear Barton’s chuckle. “Anything to add, agent?” Go ahead, Barton, he thought. You’re going to say it anyway. 

“The rooftops of Paris are lovely in September, sir.”

Phil hummed absentmindedly, scrolling through the intercepted feeds from security cameras. “I do know how much you enjoy taking long walks in the fall.”

“Are you admitting that…well, hello there.” 

Phil snapped his head up, knowing as he did that he couldn’t see over and around and through the buildings between him and the sniper. He tapped the keyboard to get the only camera near Barton’s nest. Shadows and pixellation and movement that could be someone talking to Barton or could be light distortion and a sloppy refresh rate on a low bid security system. He spread his fingers to the team behind him and shook his head. “Barton, talk to me.”

“Every other building in this area has gargoyles up here. You’re the first angel I’ve seen.”

Phil winced at the line, even as he strained to hear any response. The headsets were designed not to pick up ambient noise, but he thought, maybe, he could hear another voice. Mikko, behind him, gave the subdued squeak of victory that he couldn’t seem to train out of her. 

Barton spoke again, in the exaggerated Midwest drawl he used when luring new recruits to the range, dangling a crisp fifty and an impossible shot. “Well now, I remember from Sunday school that Michael and Gabriel both carried swords. Stands to reason that the rest would, too. Not to worry, though. I’ve got you in my sights, and all I have to do is pull the trigger. So, nice dress for strolling the attics. More suited to an embassy party. Oh, no, that’s close enough, thanks.” 

Mikko tapped his shoulder and Phil glanced backward at her monitor, then keyed his mike. “Barton, backup en route.”

“No, no, sir. I’m chatting up a girl. Don’t need a wingman. Fuck. She rabbited, sir.”

“We ID’d your angel. Congratulations, Hawkeye, you were chatting up the Black Widow.”

“You could have given me five more minutes.”

“Barton, do you have a death wish?”

“How’d you know I have a hard on?”

“Extraction point, agent.” 

“On my way, sir.”

\---:::---

Phil glanced at the screen, unsurprised at what he saw there. “You know, when I suggested you get a hobby, I wasn’t thinking this.”

“Bird watching’s too easy, boss. One fart in a surveillance van, and everybody flips you off. Pick the right op and you can get six at a time.” Barton grinned at him over his shoulder, then stretched. “Whoops, been sitting here too long.”

Phil picked up the wastebasket and swept the table free of plastic snack cake wrappers and Dr. Pepper cans. “How can you perch for days and leave a site sterile, but accumulate this kind of mess in my office in an hour?”

“Proximity to vending machines.” Barton’s hand lingered as he shut down the computer. “Sir, at what point does keeping track of a woman you met once at a party become stalking?”

“Employing a long lens camera.”

“Well shit. I’ve crossed _that_ line.”

“You’re in good company; CIA, MI6, Mossad, Interpol, they’re all watching her.”

“So are we.”

Phil blinked. Barton seldom referred to the agency as we. “Yes, but we watch lots of people. We watched you, too.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got a great ass. I’m worth watching just for that.” Barton grinned and Phil found himself fighting back an answering smile.


	2. Chapter Two

Wu leaned into the sterile office that field agents were supposed to use. “Did you see the new photos?”

Clint shook his head. “Okay, you don’t get to call me obsessed anymore. You’re enabling.”

“You’re an asset, I’m an analyst. I’m supposed to keep track of your spider.”

Clint pulled up the file, opening it over the req form, and scanned the last two pages. “She’s not usually this …”

“Indiscriminant?”

“Chaotic.”

“Two wings of the hospital, including geriatric and pediatric wards. You know how oxygen burns?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.” He stared at Wu until Wu glanced down. Wu was a good guy, most of the time, but he sometimes forgot that the blood that showed black on his files was red on Clint’s hands. Metaphorical hands. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why’d she blow up a hospital? What was there?”

“Nothing! Kids in hospital beds, medical equipment, doctors and nurses and…”

“There must have been a target. There’s gonna be a body, one of the old men, maybe. They’ll find him with a bullet wound. Maybe she spooked?”

”Yeah, because she spooks easy.” Wu sneered at the face Clint made. “Fire started in pediatrics. Under pediatrics, in fact.”

“Somebody’s kid, maybe? Blackmail or a government …”

“Low income, outdated facility, built in the thirties. And we didn’t hear of a contract. She murdered a bunch of kids and old people.”

“Why?” Clint asked again. It always comes down to why. How and where and when all spring from why. 

“Why does she kill? You know we’ve got shrinks working on that, right? More than one.”

“Yeah, they come and talk to me sometimes.”

“You’re different.”

“What, because I work for you?”

“Because you wouldn’t set fire to a hospital full of kids and old people for no reason.” Wu straightened. “You coming by for the thing this afternoon?”

Clint let him change the subject. “You bringing beer? Then I’m there.”

\--::--

Clint woke to the scent of metal. “I should kill you,” she said from the darkness.

“Yeah, you could. Do you want to?”

“I’ve not been ordered to.”

“Okay.” He rose a little, sliding his hand under his pillow with the motion. 

“I’m not being paid to,” she said, as though she hadn’t noticed. They both knew better.

“Bet you could find a bidder.” He thought about making a gargoyle crack and decided against it. He needed to put that in his report – given the chance to make a smart ass comment to an assassin with a drawn weapon, I refrained. Surely that gets a cookie? Then again, there was a good chance he was going to die in this bed, gun in his hand or not, so drafting the post-action report might be a little premature. 

He waited. The window unit wheezed into action. She stood still, black on black, a shadow amid shadows and he held himself motionless, the etched grip of the little CZ under his pillow scratching his palm, familiar and comforting. She stood watching him, or maybe not.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’m holding a gun to your head.”

“More like mid chest .. okay, now it’s at my head, yeah. You look tired.”

“You can’t see me.”

He held his tongue again. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. After another wait, she shifted. She didn’t glance at the door, but checked it. He wondered if it looked the same as when he did that. “You don’t have to shoot me. I won’t follow you.”

“Why not?”

“I’m wearing really embarrassing boxers and I don’t want them to show up in my file. Remember Kolgrov? Man, the forensic photos of that scene were embarrassing. Feathers? Really? Looked like he was banging Donald Duck when you offed him.”

She blew out a quick breath. Maybe it was a laugh, maybe not. “I could stage something. Would you prefer your people find you in something lacy?”

“Did you bring something pretty with you? Because they’ll be here damn quick.”

“Only what’s on me.”

“I’d love to see your panties, but not while you’re pointing a gun at me.”

“I can’t imagine us meeting without weapons.”

“I do,” he said, quickly. She made that same not-movement again. “Well, okay, maybe not without weapons, because it’s us. Unarmed you’re lethal. I’m good with that.” 

“Would you kill me with your bare hands, sniper?”

“You gonna make me? It’s your call.”

She twitched and he almost flinched with her. The Black Widow didn’t _have_ tells. Rumor had it she was part machine. Of course, the same rumor floated periodically about Coulson. He ran back over what he’d just said, looking for the trigger. “Your choice, Widow. What do you want to do? I’ll help you if I can.”

“You can’t.”

He gave her a heartbeat to clear the door, then threw the covers off and stepped to the hidden side of the window, gun in his hand. No street traffic, but then he hadn’t expected there to be. She could have gone up to the roof, or over to another building. He toed Johnson, face down in front of the chair facing the door, his holster untouched. He thumbed at his phone and said into it, “Yeah, we’re gonna need medical at the house. Poison? Maybe? He’s breathing and his pulse is steady. Nah, I had a visitor who wanted some privacy, that’s all.”

He pulled her file immediately after debriefing and the standing contact order had already been refreshed to kill on sight. He shook his head. She hadn’t killed Johnson or him, but threatening an on-duty SHIELD agent was a death warrant. Unless he could convince someone differently. Well, okay, maybe he could convince Coulson and let him do the sweet talking.

\--::--

Another country, another day, another night spent on a rooftop watching old men with young wives. And to think, Clint mused, some people watch reality tv. He scanned the next group of arrivals. “Sitwell, check the invite list. Who’s the guy with the …”

“We’ve already spotted her, Agent Barton. She’s accompanying the ambassador of ...”

“Don’t really care.” He remembered the kill order. “Change in mission parameters?”

“I’m calling it in for orders. Proceed as planned until notice.”

Clint snickered. “You don’t want to bork this mission just to take out the Widow.”

“I spent six months on Sonnier, and it’s not like she pulled the trigger, because you’re still talking. You’ve got eyes on him?”

“You think Sonnier’s her target?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t bother calling. Primary mission, Agent.”

“Affirmative, sir.” 

Sitwell’s reprimand was cross referenced in her file the next time he pulled it up. Clint dropped by with a six pack of the cheap ass beer Jasper favored and left it in his locker.

Neither mentioned it again.

\--::--

“I know about the kill order,” his waitress said, and Clint leaned back in his chair to let her place the bowl on the table in front of him. 

“Dammit, I wanted to eat that. S’why I ordered it.”

“I have no reason to eliminate you.” She clasped her hands in front of the bright green apron she wore.

“Back atcha.” The haughty look of disdain she gave him made him laugh. “Yeah, my boss maybe, but not me.” Moving precisely, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and laid it face up on the table. “So, your boss doesn’t want me dead?”

She walked away and he watched her. He could chase her; kitchens were fun for hand-to-hand, lots of sharp corners and pointy stabby slicing tools. Or he could sit and eat his soup. His phone buzzed. 

“Are you really going to put that in your mouth?” Coulson asked.

“She doesn’t want to …no, she ‘has no reason’ to kill me. ‘Want’ wasn’t what she said.” He took another spoonful as Coulson hummed on the other end. “The soup’s good. What now?”

“We’ll have to scrub. If the opposition has access to our internal communication…”

“She does. Doesn’t mean the other side does.”

“Barton, she _is_ the other side.” 

“There are more sides in this world than a pentagon, and you know it. Why do you think she’s here for the same thing we are?”

“Why do you think she’s not?”

“She didn’t kill me,” Clint said, and Coulson hummed again. “Why didn’t she kill me, boss? I would kill me.”

“You didn’t try another ridiculous pick up line on her. Maybe she thinks you’re trainable.” This time Clint made a noncommittal noise of acknowledgement into the phone. “You mentioned her orders; that’s when she broke contact. Come in. She’s a variable.”

“Can I finish my soup first?”

“Just don’t get dessert.”


	3. Chapter Three

Barton slid through the garret entrance, the folded over top of a waxed paper bag clenched in his teeth.

“You got dessert.”

“But I brought you some. What’s the word from Dad?” He dropped into the straight backed chair at the counter. The safe house was a tiny efficiency, a single room holding a galley kitchen and a table and room for bedrolls but no bed. 

“Don’t pack yet.” He pulled the bag from Barton’s hand and unfolded it, avoiding the damp center at the top. “The investment of … lemon?”

“That one’s mine. Yours is the crème anglaise under it.” Barton pulled the pastry from his hand as he dug for the second. 

“Wash your hands first.”

“All mmmphh nndd und.”

Coulson stared at him, appalled. 

“Mmmmph?” Barton widened his eyes as though he were asking a question.

“I’m trying to decide whether to lead with the fact that the roof, over which you had to climb to get in here, is covered in pigeon droppings or to simply remind you of the choking statistics. Can you even swallow without chewing?”

Barton swallowed and Phil reminded himself that looking away would not be the best long term decision in managing this particular asset. 

Barton put one finger into the air. “First, I’m not going to die of pigeon crap.” He raised another finger. “And second, hell yeah, I swallow. For the right incentive.”

“You probably didn’t even taste it.”

“Wanna see?” Barton made kissy lips and Phil shook his head. 

“I’m not wasting my perfectly good pastry on the likes of you,” he said, rinsing his hands and drying them carefully on the linen towel at the sink before pulling free the waxed paper over his tart. “I’m going to enjoy every bit of this, the flakiness of the base, appreciating the skill that goes into layering dough and butter, the smooth texture of the custard…” he drew a fingertip through it, then scraped the pad of his finger against his teeth. He didn’t do this. Barton did this, dropped double entendres into briefings and made inappropriate comments over comms, but Phil, Phil didn’t do this. Barton stared at Phil’s lower lip with the intensity he normally gave experimental ammunition from R&D.

Barton broke first, inhaled sharply and Phil remembered in the space of a heartbeat how Barton used to sit in the cafeteria with his right arm on the table, not quite curled around his plate. He was suddenly, painfully, ashamed of himself for teasing, and he tore his pastry into roughly equal pieces, then held one before him.

Barton blinked and took it. “Can I still watch you eat that half?” he asked as he poked his section into his mouth. 

“Only if you slow down and actually chew.” Phil covered his own embarrassment at forgetting why Barton wolfed his food with a more flirtatious tone than he normally allowed himself, then paused. The Black Widow. She wasn’t being ordered to interact with Barton. She was acting on her own. She was reaching out to them, no, to _Barton_ who was recruited in the aftermath of a failed bank heist that wouldn’t have failed if he’d been a little more cold-blooded about killing hostages. 

“You’re not eating.”

“I’m thinking,” Phil answered, but he took a bite, the rich crème and melting crumb of the pastry barely a distraction as he thought over the fleeting interaction that they’d had, all of which the Widow had initiated. “I don’t think she’s trying to recruit you.”

“Nope, you think she’s trying to come in.”

“You saw the pattern.” 

Barton raised one finger. “Break in pattern.”

“And you mentioned it to Wu.”

“He’s the analyst. I’m just a trigger finger.” He waggled his upraised finger and Coulson fought to keep from making a face.

“What does PsychOps say?”

“That she’s just an assassin and I’m just a trigger finger, and I should leave analysis to Wu.”

\--::--

Phil waited for Fury to look up. “Don’t send him.”

“I’ve lost two teams to this target, Coulson. He can take her.”

“If any of our operatives can, yes, but that’s not the. … he’s already there.”

“Not yet. He’s got a five hour head start on you, though.”

“You set him up.”

“I set the both of them up. Either he kills her, in which case, I no longer have an assassin not under my control throwing off my international operations, or he brings her in, in which case he’s her knight in shining fucking armor. He likes me. Likes SHIELD.”

“He likes three hots and a cot, and he thinks you like him.”

“I do. He reminds me of you. Doesn’t keep me from using him.”

Despite what most of the world believed, Fury had tells. Phil knew most of them. 

All three of them, he’d set all _three_ of them up and Phil was surprised at just how unsurprised he was. He calmed his face. “When did you get so good at this, Director?”

“You were there every step of the way,” Fury said and Coulson nodded. Fury tapped his desk. “I’m not wrong.”

“You’re not right.” In so many ways, Phil thought. 

“Tell me my tactical error.”

“I don’t play chess with you anymore. And if she kills him?”

“Then I’ll pay for his funeral.” Fury didn’t blink.

Coulson kept himself from chewing on his lip by a force of will. “When’s my transport?”

“Waiting for you. You’ll be on the ground six hours after he hits.”

“Five and a half hours for his body to cool.” Phil walked out of Fury’s office, pulling his jacket straight and smoothing his tie, and headed to the flight deck.

\--::--

Phil made two stops on his way to a safe house in Brussels that was officially off rotation for another year. The first was to pull Agent Sanderson off his futile surveillance of the arranged meet point, and the second was for coffee. He opened the door to the barrels of two handguns and the gleaming edge of one arrowhead. He kicked the door shut behind himself and walked between them to the table in the center of the room. Barton flushed as he lowered his weapon, slipping the nock free. 

“Good morning,” he said with a nod, seating himself at the table, setting three paper cups of coffee in the very center.

“I can explain –“ Barton started but Phil raised one finger. Barton rubbed at his face and continued, “Oh crap, I am so sorry.” Phil pointed to the other chair and Barton dropped heavily into it.

The woman in front him reholstered her weapons. “I brought my dowry. I have intel on activity from ….”

“We’re not interested.”

Barton, beside him, gaped. 

She blinked. It might have been surprise, or it might have been the sunlight, or it might have been dust fluttering from the smear of dirt across her forehead or even the no-longer bleeding scratch far too close to her eye. “Then I’ll be on my way.”

“First, please give me a moment to explain what I am refusing.” Phil gestured to the last chair at the table, across from him. She nodded and sat, regal as any czarina, the scattered rips in her sleeves fluttering like lace. Phil dug into his coat pocket and scattered the pile of packets of sweetener between the coffees on the table. He sat, popped the lid on his, and blew over the top. Clint took a second and dumped four sugars into it. The third paper cup sat untouched in the middle of the table. 

“I would prefer not to be in your crosshairs while you do it.” 

Phil pulled his weapon free and set it with a muffled clank on the table next to his coffee, then did the same with his backup piece, then the black matte stiletto he kept at the small of his back. Clint, in his peripheral vision, winced. 

“Do you expect me to do the same?” she asked.

“No. Disarming you would do no good. Or would take too much time. Probably both.” Barton huffed a laugh into his coffee and for a moment Phil thought about asking him to leave. Then she glanced sideways and he knew that would end what chance for negotiation he had. 

“I welcome any information that you choose to give us, of course. And if you like, we’ll pay a reasonable amount for it. However, I will not rescind the kill order.” He paused to lean to the side, to meet her eyes again around the gun that had instantly appeared between them. “Unless you choose to work for us.”

“You sit in my sights, at point blank, and threaten me?”

“Of course not. I’m sitting in front of a drawn weapon and offering you the opportunity to join me.”

She smiled. Or rather, the very edge of one side of her mouth curled up. He decided to call it a smile until he saw otherwise. “I rather prefer being on this side, thank you.”

Phil sipped his coffee. “You are in the crosshairs of every organization on this planet, the government intelligence agencies of twenty countries, organized crime on three continents, and, since November of last year, your previous … employers.”

“Call a leash and collar such.”

“We offer a more traditional paycheck. Top notch medical coverage. There may be a retirement package. I wouldn’t know.”

Barton snorted. “I tried wooing her with the mess hall. Do we get vacation, boss?”

“I wouldn’t know about that, either.” 

“I don’t need vacation and retire is a euphemism.”

“Yes, it is.” Coulson agreed. “But when is the last time you slept?”

She lowered the gun. “Are you volunteering your bed, Agent?” she purred, and yes, he thought, she earned her reputation.

“No, but I’m volunteering to stand watch.”

\--::--

They ignored the slight scrape from the closed door as she did something to the lock. “You didn’t get the information she promised.”

Phil shook his head. “I believe she’ll be more comfortable keeping possession for now.” 

“Like a tiny teddy bear full of high tech espionage.”

“All teddy bears hold secrets. That’s the point of teddy bears.”

Barton shrugged and Phil hid his wince. He knew better, he did. Months of dancing around Barton’s scars, and now he was trampling them. 

Barton looked up from his hands. “How mad are you? I mean, at me.”

“For evading Sanderson, going AWOL in the middle of a mission, hiding information vital to functioning of not only your operation, but others as well, endangering yourself and other agents and essentially doing everything that I promised Fury you wouldn’t do when I brought you in?”

Barton reverted to the face he wore through those early weeks, the thousand yard stare. “You’re taking my weapon? Or am I out of ---”

“Don’t be ridiculous. If I were willing to cut you loose, I wouldn’t bother being as pissed off at you as I am.” Phil watched as the meaning of that sunk in, as Barton sat back and blinked, then rose and got a glass of water to cover his reaction. 

“I’m really really sorry. Coulson, I just .. I knew and I couldn’t explain to Wu how I knew.”

Phil let some of the anger he felt leak into his voice.

“Then you talk to me.”

Barton rubbed at the back of his neck and winced. “Fury’s gonna be pissed.”

“I’ll handle Fury. You can expect disciplinary action, though.” 

“Fuck.”

“Maybe a stint in new recruit training to refresh your memory of the regulations that we operate under.”

Barton drained the glass. “Wait, you want to run her through normal training? You _want_ to lose all of this quarter’s recruits? She’ll eat them.”

“No, she won’t. She’s smarter than that. She’ll find the center of the bell curve and plant herself there and not a one of them will know who she is. Not everyone needs a spotlight on a tightrope.”

Barton flipped him a rude gesture, but he smiled and Phil could feel some of the tension leave his shoulders. Then the polite smile Barton wore lit into something more mischievous, more real. “You think they’ll send her in for the mandatory psych eval?”

Coulson felt the corners of his own mouth curl. “Sure,” he said, “I’ll set her up with Anderson. He needs humbling.”

\--::--

 

She walked into the room and the air was pulled out, like some kind of vacuum triggered by the sway of her hips. She walked to the window, trailed a hand across Barton’s shoulders, then rubbed her finger across his jaw as she moved around him and came to Phil. She straddled his thighs where he sat and he obligingly leaned back and moved his hands to the side. That left him with his hands in mid-air, so he dropped them carefully down to interlace his fingers behind his back, at the level of the woven seat. The pose forced his shoulders back, but he had to look up to keep his eyes on hers anyway. It also took his hands too far from his rig, but he had Barton for that. 

“Thanks for the nap,” she said. “So now you’ll take what you want?”

“Oh dear,” Phil said. He broke off eye contact to rest his neck, but that left him staring into her cleavage, which really wasn’t an improvement. He took a deep breath and could feel his dick swell, just enough to shift in his briefs and remind him that it had been a while since he was three inches from an impressive set of breasts. “You are so beautiful,” he said in the general direction of her left nipple, and she chuckled, rich, throaty, staged. He continued, “And you are so far off your game. Should have tried the innocent, rather than the seductress.”

She glanced over her shoulder at Barton, then back to him. “You both know better. You refuse to be honest with me?”

He kept his hands behind his back and looked up again to meet her eyes. “I will always be honest with you. I want you. He wants you. What you don’t know is that I want to wrap you in a blanket and make the world a softer place. I’d like to promise you safety, and comfort, and protection.”

She leaned in, too close for seduction, pressing her breasts against his chest, and whispered into his ear, “So what are you promising me?” 

“I’m offering you a job. Your job. My job.” He shrugged, his arms awkward, and she rose off his lap, swinging her ankle free and walking away from the table to put her back to the wall. His thighs felt cool. “Intel and a team to cover you and recon, I can give you that, but Widow, you are … I cannot give you what I don’t have.” 

“A blanket?” She asked and he smiled, aware of the absurdity of the metaphor. “A red one, perhaps. There’s blood on your hands.”

“Of course there is. And there will be.”

“So much for my choice.”

“Choosing your employers, but not the employment, no. You are the Black Widow. We’re … you know who we are. I can only offer you a bullet or a gun.”

“We’ll die young.” Her face twisted, a sign of some internal struggle he couldn’t begin to guess at. “Today or tomorrow.”

“Yes, we will, but I’ll try my utmost to make sure we die heroes.”

“I don’t believe in heroes.”

“Neither does he.” Phil nodded to where Barton sat. “I’m still working on that.”

She glanced again at Barton, who shrugged. Her eyes narrowed. “No, now you lie to me. I have heard him speak of you.”

“I may have used the word ‘infallible,’ sir. Told you that you’d regret the word-a-day calendar.”

“I have regrets,” Phil said, and the woman in front of him blinked. “That’s not one of them. And I will not lie to you. Transport lifts in an hour. Do you want to make your own way there or will you ride with us?”

“If I choose payment for the data on the flash drive and walk away?”

“Then I need bank account information and whatever you want to give me.”

She stepped toward him, her head high, a subtle move that reminded him of a Cuban ballerina for some reason, and held out her hand. He took it automatically. “Natasha Romanov,” she said.

“Phillip Coulson,” he answered.


	4. Epilogue

The whine of the engines set Clint’s teeth on edge in a way they normally didn’t. If he were being honest, it wasn’t the engines, it was the careful way Coulson handed Romanov a sealed bottle of water, and the way she sat, her hands always in view. The bulk of the C-17 was taken up with pre-packed pallets leaving space for them to sit and ignore each other as hard as they could. The rumble normally acted like a lullabye, but not this trip.

Coulson unzipped a soft sided case and dug out a bag of sandwiches, laying them carefully on a folded paper bag. Clint reached for one, and Coulson tapped the back of his hand, then looked to Romanov. She folded to her knees on the cold metal before them as Coulson cut the sandwich nearest him in half, then did the same to the other two. She picked up one and handed it to Coulson, who took a bite. She pulled it out of his hand and sat back on her heels to eat.

He reached for the pile of food again and escaped being smacked for it this time. “Jesus,” he mumbled around dry roast beef and wilted lettuce. ”You two are making me paranoid.”

“Be happy I didn’t get soup; we’d be sharing a spoon,” Coulson said as he picked up half of a turkey on rye. “Catch some rest. We’re easily five hours out.”

Clint nodded and folded himself into a structural hollow and let his eyes close. None of them slept.

**Author's Note:**

> references images and relationships mentioned in [Cart, then Horse](http://archiveofourown.org/works/514636), but is not a deliberate prequel.


End file.
